Is <link title="" rel="stylesheet" ...> a persistent or a preferred stylesheet? (HTML errata item requested)

This affects HTML4 and DOM2 (and, since it affects stylesheets from both
directions, I figured www-style might be interested too).

When replying please pick the appropriate forum for your reply.


In HTML4, section 14.3.2, one finds:

# * To make a style sheet persistent, set the rel attribute to
#   "stylesheet" and don't set the title attribute.
# * To make a style sheet preferred, set the rel attribute to
#   "stylesheet" and name the style sheet with the title attribute.

This language is ambiguous about how to handle a null string for the title
attribute. Does "set" imply "to a non-null value"?

If an empty title is still a preferred stylesheet, as opposed to a
persistent stylesheet, then this also requires a DOM errata item, since
currently DOM2 has no way of identifying the difference between a missing
title and an empty title from the styleSheets interface (section 1.2):

# title of type DOMString, readonly
#   The advisory title. The title is often specified in the ownerNode. See
#   the title attribute definition for the LINK element in HTML 4.0, and
#   the title pseudo-attribute for the XML style sheet processing
#   instruction.

A clarification from the HTML working group and potentially the DOM
working group would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
-- 
Ian Hickson                                     )\     _. - ._.)       fL
Netscape, Standards Compliance QA              /. `- '  (  `--'
CSS Working Group, Invited Expert              `- , ) -  > ) \
irc.mozilla.org:Hixie _________________________  (.' \) (.' -' __________

Received on Friday, 19 January 2001 08:13:29 UTC